Key Terms and Concepts in 19th Century American Social Movements and Politics

Anti-Slavery Society

Founded in Boston in 1833, the society was dedicated to the abolition of slavery.

Book of Mormon

The religious text Mormons received through Joseph Smith and consider a part of the Christian canon.

Committees of Vigilance

Also known as vigilantes, groups of people who took on extralegal means to assert law and order.

compromise

Settlement of differences by arbitration or by consent reached by mutual concessions.

convention

An assembly of persons meeting for a common purpose.

Deep South

A region of the southeastern U.S.—usually considered to include Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and all or part of the adjacent states of Florida, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas.

dissent

To differ in opinion.

Kitchen Cabinet

The advisors President Jackson used, rather than his actual Cabinet-level secretaries, for advice and guidance.

McCulloch v. Maryland

An 1819 U.S. Supreme Court decision, related to the Second Bank of the United States, reinforcing the power of the federal government over state governments.

millenarian movement

Usually a religious movement that anticipates a coming disaster or major transformative period and prepares for it.

moderate

Professing or characterized by political or social beliefs that are not extreme.

Mormonism

Beliefs of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

null and void

Ineffectual; without legal force.

nullification

A constitutional doctrine holding that a state has a legal right to declare a national law null and void within its borders.

Oneida Community

A nineteenth-century utopian religious society that allowed for unorthodox sexual practices among its members.

polygamy

Marriage in which a spouse of either sex may have more than one mate at the same time.

protectionist

An advocate of government economic protection for domestic producers through restrictions on foreign competitors.

radical

Associated with political views, practices, and policies of extreme change.

Seneca Falls Woman's Rights Convention

A significant convention demanding women's equality in legal rights held in upstate New York in 1848.

Shakers

Members of a millenarian sect originating in England in 1747 who practiced celibacy and an ascetic communal life.

spoils system

A way of selecting people for government jobs based on the idea that 'to the victor belongs the spoils.'

Tariff of Abominations

A revised federal tariff (or tax on imports) that lowered the tax on cotton products but raised it on many of the products made in the mid-Atlantic states.

The Liberator

A newspaper dedicated to the antislavery cause, launched by William Lloyd Garrison in 1831.

Underground Railroad

Support system set up by antislavery groups in the upper South and the North to assist fugitive slaves in escaping the South.

union

A political unit constituting an organic whole formed usually from units which were previously governed separately and which have surrendered or delegated their principal powers to the government of the whole.

Unitarian Church

A denomination that stresses individual freedom of belief, the free use of reason in religion, a united world community, and liberal social action.